Today in the EffectaTrade Review, we present to you a classic Forex/CFD scam broker. At first glance, its offers might seem incredibly enticing: trading with tight spreads, a modern trading platform with fast order execution, and a professional support team. However, as soon as you try to learn more about the company, it becomes evident that this is a scam project. The only thing a company without registration and licensing can do is collect traders’ money and keep it for themselves. Curious about our conclusions? We’ve shared more details about this pseudo-firm and its methods below.
Key Features
- Company Name: EffectaTrade
- Website: http://effectatrade.com
- Available Contacts: [email protected]
- Foundation: 2024
- Services: Forex/CFD trading
- License: No
- Initial Deposit: $250
From Sign-Up to Payout
The official EffectaTrade website made a positive first impression at first glance. The colors are well chosen, the images are abundant, and the pages load quickly — credit to the developers for this. Unfortunately, the good things end here. The content of this website is simply awful:
- Most pages resemble advertising presentations more than useful information sources. They mainly feature short phrases about the broker’s advantages and buttons redirecting to trading sections, without any explanations where they are clearly needed.
- There are no educational materials, analytics, or market reviews available. The pages that were likely intended for these purposes are filled with widgets from TradingView. While they look decent, they provide no actual value.
- Critical information for traders is also missing. It seems the project’s owners have never heard of contract specifications, financial disclosure, payment methods, or fees.
- The only action users can perform independently is the initial registration process. After completing it, users discover in their personal account that every other action — funding an account, withdrawing funds, verifying the account, etc. — requires the involvement of company representatives. To proceed, users must send an email to the provided address.
We’ve never encountered such total control before. But then again, it’s not surprising. Scammers always try to limit the capabilities of unwanted clients — those who might warn others about the platform being a scam. Thus, EffectaTrade’s actions were no surprise to us, but they created a negative impression of the company within the first five minutes of our review.
Our Trading Experience With EffectaTrade
Interestingly, the broker uses an original trading platform, which is quite rare. Traders are offered the option to use a web terminal, but those interested can also download a desktop version or an Android app.
Unfortunately, the company seems to have server issues, as downloading the desktop terminal halts at the first 5 MB. The mobile platform in .apk format downloads without issues. However, this raises a question: why doesn’t the firm distribute the app via Google Play Market? Does the software violate Google’s policies? Or has the developer been blacklisted?
The web version of the terminal looks quite solid and appears to offer all the necessary functionality. It even includes multi-chart mode and 1-Click Trading. However, upon closer inspection, the charm fades:
- Having multiple windows open in the workspace in multi-chart mode reduces its practical value to zero. While you can adjust the scale, adding indicators clutters the price chart with labels. As a result, technical analysis becomes ineffective.
- The selection of indicators is not extensive, and adding new ones is impossible. It would be nice to either expand the standard list or enable the addition of custom analysis tools.
- The broker (or software developer) does not publish an API. Naturally, this makes algorithmic trading impossible.
Overall, while the terminal is functional, it falls short of the best software available.
We also encountered issues with how trading conditions are implemented on the platform. We opened a Bronze account, which, according to the tariff table, offers spreads starting from 2.8 pips. However, in the terminal, we observed a difference between the bid and ask prices for the EUR/USD pair of 0.4 pips. What happens when a position is opened?
Such discrepancies between the trading conditions listed on the website and the actual asset parameters in the terminal are a clear sign of a scam broker. Only scam platforms neglect to align the terms of executed trades with their declared conditions. This is because scammers inherently consider the client’s entire deposit as their earnings. Therefore, they are indifferent to the numbers displayed to the user since the results of virtual trades don’t matter.
The Reality Check
The biggest mystery of EffectaTrade is its official information. You won’t find any details about the company’s registration, office locations, operating history, etc., on any page or document. In fact, the broker hasn’t even created social media accounts, an online chat, or a phone line for support.
We are almost 100% certain that the firm’s owners are hiding this information for one reason: the platform operates without registration or licensing. Let’s try to shed some light on this. Of course, we don’t know where to look for company information. Therefore, we’ll use a universal solution: searching through the OpenCorporates database. This database contains information on over 200 million legal entities from most countries worldwide.
As we can see, the search yielded no results.
Of course, no database, not even OpenCorporates, can guarantee information about every company worldwide. However, with over 95% certainty, we can conclude that EffectaTrade is not registered anywhere. This means:
- We are dealing with a virtual broker operating exclusively online.
- It does not hold a license, as even offshore regulators do not issue such documents to virtual entities, such as websites or social media pages.
- The pseudo-company lacks corporate bank accounts and cards. This explains their requirement to fund accounts only through their support team. After all, the “broker” cannot publish personal bank details on their website instead of company information. Similarly, their persistent suggestions to deposit via cryptocurrency became clear. We can also confidently say that the promised segregated accounts in the “most reliable banks” are purely fictional.
- Liquidity from major providers is unlikely — they do not partner with unregistered companies. This gives us reason to suspect that not only is the broker virtual, but the entire trading process is as well. It’s doubtful the company has enough funds to execute all traders’ orders. Most likely, they simply assign fake statuses to trades while keeping clients’ money securely in their own pockets.
- The source of the quotes is unknown. The fake broker definitely does not receive them from any legitimate electronic trading information system.
The conclusion is straightforward. The broker deceives its clients by accepting their money while conducting illegal operations.
How Long Has EffectaTrade Been in the Game?
Another interesting aspect is the company’s operating period. We determined this based on the domain registration date, which is easily accessible via the Whois service.
The results of this check were somewhat unexpected. It turns out that the domain effectatrade.com was registered only on November 6, 2024. This means the broker has been online for less than a month. Naturally, a new broker cannot yet have a solid reputation in the trading community. However, if the platform continues its current practices, building a reputation won’t take long. Unfortunately, that reputation will simply be as a “scam broker.”
Extra Fraud Indicators
Given that the broker has been operating for less than a month, it would be unreasonable to expect numerous EffectaTrade reviews online. However, the company has already gained some notoriety — and it’s all negative. Publications about the broker have already appeared on industry-specific portals, where experts harshly critique every detail and draw an obvious conclusion: this platform is a scam and unsafe to use. We can only agree with this assessment.
Is EffectaTrade the Right Fit?
Based on the findings in this EffectaTrade review, the conclusion is clear: this broker was created by scammers with the sole purpose of collecting and stealing traders’ funds. The company has not undergone registration or obtained a license. Additionally, all critical information is hidden from users. Essentially, clients are being asked to collaborate with a firm about which nothing is known. Naturally, the risks in such a situation exceed all imaginable limits. The best option is to ignore this scam platform’s offers and seek a legitimate licensed broker instead.
I think EffectaTrade is a scam. I probably shouldn’t have agreed to their offer. They promised big money without risk, and I naively thought it was achievable. They tricked me out of around $12,000. It all started with constant calls and stories about how profitable trading with them would be. Then, they asked for insurance payments. Later, even small withdrawal requests were rejected, with strange excuses every time. I eventually gave up and tried to withdraw my funds, but nothing worked – they didn’t approve a single request.